The new BSD-licensed sound cores for the YM series is in the current tree for MAME. If you're inclined to try compiling your own MAME, this is a good time to take a look. A partial list of affected drivers is at https://gist.github.com/Firehawke/019f8 ... f0dec3efb9
Since a lot of shmups are in the list, AND I know more than a few of you have actual arcade boards, I'm posting this here-- if you can find anything that has broken sound, put in a report on Github.
I'm hoping we'll eventually be able to talk Capcom into using the new sound core after it's been tested sufficiently; I expect it to be in the next official release at the end of the month barring any major surprise issues. So far there's only been one, and that was fixed within 24 hours.
MAME YM2151 sound change
Re: MAME YM2151 sound change
I preferred the older MAME license that forbade code redistribution in commercial products. How does the sound core team feel when their free labor essentially provides value for parasitic rights holders to profit off their work?
Of course, that's just an opinion.
Always seeking netplay fans to play emulated arcade games with.
Always seeking netplay fans to play emulated arcade games with.
Re: MAME YM2151 sound change
They probably feel fine, considering they did this work from scratch specifically so they could put it under less restrictive license - if they felt bad about it they wouldn't have to do anything, and just let the GPL licensed cores be thereMathU wrote:How does the sound core team feel when their free labor essentially provides value for parasitic rights holders to profit off their work?
Re: MAME YM2151 sound change
Indeed, unlike some we don't want to keep things under lock and key to boost our own egos.pja wrote:They probably feel fine, considering they did this work from scratch specifically so they could put it under less restrictive license - if they felt bad about it they wouldn't have to do anything, and just let the GPL licensed cores be thereMathU wrote:How does the sound core team feel when their free labor essentially provides value for parasitic rights holders to profit off their work?
It's been a long, and difficult journey, with a lot of code being rewritten over the course of the last 5 years, since the initial switchover to BSD with GPL bits, but current versions of MAME are finally becoming something that can be used freely as more and more GPL bits are rewritten; the sound cores here were one of the big ones.
What we want is for people to have the best emulation experience on current platforms, not to have to endure bad ports with buggy sound emulation because they've had to scrape together an alternate solution to avoid GPL code that was unsuitable from a licensing point of view, or be spending their time trying to hide the fact that they're using unsuitable code rather than delivering a quality product.
I've said before, MAME is a science project, the code is the result of our research, it being available to use freely, with only accreditation being required is our contribution to the field. Scientific research should not be held hostage, it should exist for all to benefit from. With old versions, we hadn't yet come to this understanding (nobody really expected MAME to become what it is today) but as time has passed, and we've become more confident in our own work, it seems fit to go down this path of making what we can free to use.
A considerable amount of effort has been put into this, and while we can't do anything about the problematic non-commercial licensing on the older (pre 0.172) versions, we can do something about it for newer ones.
Re: MAME YM2151 sound change
Admittedly, the areas I typically work on inside MAME are not applicable-- software lists and documentation are generally of far less interest to Capcom-- but I'm absolutely a believer in the re-licensing process.
The state of commercial emulation goes anywhere from fairly bad to really solid, depending on who gets the license. This is not to say MAME is perfect-- there's certainly a lot more to be done there-- but if the BSD license means that licensees like DotEmu put out better products it's better for the community as a whole.
Another way of looking at it:
We never had the financial resources to stop Chinese bootleg 300-in-1 MAME units in the first place, so the old license was only preventing companies that were acting in good faith. Those are exactly the companies we'd rather see have access to the code for reuse.
The state of commercial emulation goes anywhere from fairly bad to really solid, depending on who gets the license. This is not to say MAME is perfect-- there's certainly a lot more to be done there-- but if the BSD license means that licensees like DotEmu put out better products it's better for the community as a whole.
Another way of looking at it:
We never had the financial resources to stop Chinese bootleg 300-in-1 MAME units in the first place, so the old license was only preventing companies that were acting in good faith. Those are exactly the companies we'd rather see have access to the code for reuse.
Re: MAME YM2151 sound change
Also, yeah, that.
I've been called to work on a commercial project before to 'get it across the finish line'
It ended up not being released.
The reason it ended up not being released is because yes, they'd identified that they couldn't use certain code that wasn't under a suitable license, namely that MAME audio code but thought that had been taken care of.
I did a code review of their code. The code they were using was clearly just a refactored, slightly obfuscated version of that unsuitable code.
When I raised this issue, I was called into a meeting and asked if I was sure of what I was saying, because half the entire project budget (and that included licensing of the games, and the remaining staff + artists etc.) had been spent on hiring the guy who provided the audio code. All he'd done was rip-off MAME, try to disguise that and pocket the money.
Makes me wonder how many other places he got away with that too, claiming to be an expert in the field and demanding pay on that grade despite likely not knowing a thing about emulation except how to use it to scam people by selling them a lie.
This move puts an end to that.
I've been called to work on a commercial project before to 'get it across the finish line'
It ended up not being released.
The reason it ended up not being released is because yes, they'd identified that they couldn't use certain code that wasn't under a suitable license, namely that MAME audio code but thought that had been taken care of.
I did a code review of their code. The code they were using was clearly just a refactored, slightly obfuscated version of that unsuitable code.
When I raised this issue, I was called into a meeting and asked if I was sure of what I was saying, because half the entire project budget (and that included licensing of the games, and the remaining staff + artists etc.) had been spent on hiring the guy who provided the audio code. All he'd done was rip-off MAME, try to disguise that and pocket the money.
Makes me wonder how many other places he got away with that too, claiming to be an expert in the field and demanding pay on that grade despite likely not knowing a thing about emulation except how to use it to scam people by selling them a lie.
This move puts an end to that.